It's 74 degrees here in Las Vegas this late afternoon, but Saturday is supposed to be 49 degrees.

I'm so sorry I haven't been good about posting here. For someone who doesn't do much, I've been really busy with a variety of things, and I think of every single thing I do - even unplugging the charged cell phone - in terms of how much time it will take.

I was going to describe some of it, but it was boring for me, so probably even more so for you.

Here's some of things that have happened around here:

The cat fell off the rail along the upstairs hall about 12 feet onto the stairs below. We don't know if she landed on her feet, but she seems to be fine, and we haven't seen her up there since.

I have been horribly busy with setting up and maintaining websites, and database maintenance. I'm not tempted to start my own blog platform, but can see where a person could do that.

You know, when people say something 'is organic' or 'developed organically' I never quite know what they mean if they aren't talking about food. The context will be something like: "the living room is decorated organically." Does this mean what we used to call 'earth tones' in the 70s? Is it literally sticks and stones? I never know.

Or they'll say: 'it flows organically from the process.' Does this mean that the result just happens without anyone thinking about it?

In between frowning at the computer, I am planning my Christmas menu and my escape from here back to Colorado. I have to go a different route and visit my uncle who just went into a nursing home. I'm going to make some raisin-filled cookies for him like his mother used to make. Last time I made them for him, he let me know they weren't exactly right. She might have used date filling, but too bad, it will be raisins.

This will add an extra night to our trip home, and Eloise will have to sleep in the truck. It's a double cab with a huge area in back when the seats are flipped up. I call it the living room. She'll be fine, but I have to be careful that she doesn't escape. She has a microchip, but it's easier to just avoid all that by being watchful.

When I get home a bunch of stuff will have built up for me to do - meetings, Dish Network coming to change the cable boxes. It's hard to leave here, and I hope this is the last year that I have so much to do with flood recovery.

This morning I lurked out front waiting for the garbage truck so I could give them their tips. I always try to observe ahead to make sure I give it to the regular guys and not some supervisor filling in for them. I'm sure the supervisors don't make much money, either, but it'd be more than the usual guys. I think I've seen this guy named Christian before, but the guy at the back of the truck is different from last year's. Anyhow, I gave them $30 each because I'm sure hardly anyone else on our street tips them. It's ironic because we have the least amount of trash.

We stayed at a nice casino hotel a couple of Thursday in a row, and it was a change of scene while I worked on my websites and databases.

Have you noticed eggnog lately? They have all sorts of different flavors: caramel, minty, pumpkin spice, blueberry. We overheard an argument when an old guy told his wife: "What about just plain old eggnog flavored eggnog?" So when Mr. Troutbend went to buy some the other day, they didn't have any, but he came home with half a gallon of "Holiday Nog." It's "Eggnog Flavored 2% Milk," and is not as thick and gummy and sweet as what they call eggnog, but it's actually better in some ways. I used to dilute that traditional stuff with milk anyway. It doesn't have as strong a rum and nutmeg flavors, but we can always address that by other means.

Using Zillow to look at homes for sale in my neighborhood, I find the ones with the same floor plan as mine and look for decorating ideas. The one on the next street behind us is not inspiring, so I'm satisfied with my own for now.

Best wishes to all of you for a nice next couple of days.





No dress-up for Eloise: